“This is what can happen if you don’t settle,” said RIAA attorney
Richard Gabriels, speaking to reporters just outside the Duluth, Minnesota
Courthouse, minutes after Jammie Thomas was found liable for copyright
infringement to the tune of $222,000.

Thomas, a single mom with two kids, left the courthouse
without comment and did not speak with reporters.

Under the username “Tereastarr,” Thomas was found sharing
just over 1,700 files via the Kazaa network on February 21, 2005. Of those
1,700 tracks, 24 were named – including music from popular artists such as AFI,
Green Day, and Aerosmith – and for each one she was held liable for $9,250
worth of damages, coming to a grand total of $222,000.

Brian Toder, Thomas’ defense attorney, maintained that there
existed no proof that Thomas was the person behind the keyboard, noting that
Thomas or her computer may have been the victim of zombie botnet, spoofing
attacks, or malicious crackers. “All we know is that Jammie Thomas didn’t do
it,” said Toder, adding that Thomas was “not the person marauding as
Tereastarr.”

This defense did not appear to hold up as it was found that
Thomas used “Tereastarr” all around the internet, including online shopping,
chat services, e-mail, and even dating services. The offending songs were
linked to her cable modem’s MAC address, as well as her home IP address.

Complicating Thomas’ defense was testimony from an
ex-boyfriend saying while he had never seen her actively downloading music, she
did have her hard drive replaced a month after her computer was picked up in
the RIAA’s dragnets. Toder said that this was due to hard drive problems –
something Thomas’ ex-boyfriend remembered her complaining about beforehand –
but the RIAA argued that she had it changed to cover her tracks.

Forensic scientists could not find any evidence of file
sharing on her new hard drive, and her old hard drive was not admitted as
evidence.
Capitol Records v.
Jammie Thomas, as Thomas’ loss is more formally known, was the first lawsuit
of its kind to proceed before a jury as well as a landmark case that set precedent
heavily favoring the RIAA in future legal battles. U.S. District Judge Michael
Davis ruled that one could be guilty of copyright infringement merely by the
act of making copyrighted songs available for download; as a result the RIAA
did not need to establish that Thomas at her computer at the time her was
accessed by investigators, nor did they need to prove that anyone actually
downloaded the music she offered.

While the RIAA no longer publishes the number of lawsuits it’s
filed in its four-years-and-counting legal campaign against file sharers, many
publications speculate that that number stands
anywhere between 18,000 and 36,000 lawsuits, with untold more settling long
before the actual trial.